Becoming Whole

Education is an extremely messy business. We often find educationists, politicians, social thinkers, and, indeed, almost all parents getting involved in intense debates over issues such as who shall get to educate whom, who needs to be educated, the contents of this education, how education is to be extended to different kinds of people, what types of education are to be devised for different categories of human beings, and the rewards, punishments, encouragements, and reformations that shall go with this whole process. One reason why such issues give rise to never-ending discussions is because it is quite difficult to get people to agree on how we shall go about achieving one of the expressed purposes of 'education', which is to 'make people whole'.

There is, of course, no shortage of 'extremist' views in this matter, and the following suggestion is my own. Children should be taken to graveyards or cemeteries, possibly on a Saturday/Sunday evening, and left there for half an hour to wander around and ponder on what lies beneath the grass. I do not say this for deliberate shock-effect, for I really do believe, perhaps reductionistically, that this is one the readiest ways to solve many of our human problems. Many of such problems arise, I think, from our inability to recognise, accept, grasp and 'internalise' this simple fact : I, the writer of this blog, and you, its reader, may be dead in the next two minutes. It is, in fact, so simple that one can be excused for feeling overwhelmed by the variety of means that we resort to in order to ignore or disguise it, run away from it or cover it up. I myself have plenty of them at my disposal : the attempts at getting a Ph.D., a developed habit of reading through a potentially infinite list of books, a certain taste for music, and an acquired training in asking all sorts of questions. And there are thousands of other such things which are up for grabs, starting from astrological speculations to investment banking to internet surfing to kayaking to motor racing to sumo wrestling to yatch building. Consequently, we begin to see so much of ourselves in what we have acquired that we almost begin to hope for a kind of vicarious immortality in and through them; we shall die, but we like to hope that at least our children, our cars, our Ph.D. theses, and our yatches will endure beyond our deaths, so that the more of the latter that we can acquire, the higher are our chances at attaining a life after the grave.

Regular trips to cemeteries can have a potent educative value in eradicating from children any latent desires that they might be harbouring for such immortality. But, then, of course this is hardly a proposal any ('optimistic') parent will listen to, and even as I write these words I can already hear the objection coming up, 'How utterly morbid and pessimistic that is! How can you send our lovely koochie-kooo children to dark, damp, and bleak graveyards when they should instead be playing around with dogs, cats, butterflies, dahlias, and lilies under a sunny sky?'

Yes, indeed, I would not recommend a daily visit to the graveyard to anybody, irrespective of that person's age. However, a cultivated habit of spending half an hour --- which is not asking much, if you remember that a week has 168 hours --- can make people feel 'liberated' from this world in a manner that those who think that graveyards are 'only for the dead' probably know nothing of. The next time you are in a graveyard (or have had the ill-luck on stumbling upon one at a carefully sanitised corner of your City) go through some of the epitaphs, and you might come across one of a man who died in 1745. And then slowly think : 'Not only this man himself, but also those who grieved when he had died, have been dead for over two centuries now.'

And when you see the setting sun, let it all sink into you : your cars, your shoes, your softwares, your essays, your books, your academic prowess, your music, your pastels, your fame, your glory, your novels, your blogs, your poetry, your prestige, your photographs, and whatever else you might have labelled 'yours', are as insubstantial as the shimmering mist over a dawn lake. This realisation, trust me on this, will not set you sliding down a slope of despair. Rather, once you have really 'internalised' the future possibility of your non-existence, you shall become truly whole, and neither life nor death will then have any power over you. Is this a 'pessimistic view of life'? As for the medicine prescribed, it is sure a bitter pill to swallow, and especially for those who may even refuse to believe that there is a malaise within themselves. But as for the remedy promised, what else could be more optimistic?

Russell Under The Elms

This is the road that I used to take from my rooms across the river Cam to the Great Court in Trinity. The trees in the photograph still stand here, bare-leafed and speechless these wintry days. I wonder where this little boy is today. Perhaps he is dead, perhaps still alive. A woman's momentary smile captured in black and white for some to wonder about, for some to smile back, and for some to blog about.

The Varieties of Ambiguous Experience

Here is a parable that will hopefully help you, dear reader of my blog, to appreciate the ambiguous nature of our experiences, by which I mean that they can be 'interpreted' in accordance with more than one explanatory scheme.

Once upon a time, in a condition called the State of Nature, there used to live human beings who were quite happy with the way that things were. Until, that is, one day when the village Idiot had this astounding question to ask his friends, 'What if things are really not the way that they seem to be like to us?' Soon enough, more and more people began to echo the Idiot's question, until practically everyone could be heard asking that question in some form or the other. It became, shall we say, very cool to have that question on your lips --- never mind what you thought the answer to it was. Things began to get out of hand when people with different answers began to quarrel with one another vociferously, and the village Mayor began to feel trouble fomenting just beneath the surface. So one morning, he summoned to him two of his most-trusted soldiers, Katala and Putala, and asked them to go out into the wider world in search of a reply to that most famous question.

Katala and Putala went out together, asking people in the neighbouring countries if they had some answer to that question. In some countries, they were greeted with utter stupefaction, 'Excuse me, what was that again?'; in others, they were given a warm welcome, 'You see, things really are not what they seem to be'; and in yet others, they were jeered at, 'What a ridiculous suggestion!' So they journeyed on for years on end, until one evening they came to a great mountain. When they approached it, they saw two caves on its massive wall, one of which had the word 'Truth' written over it, and the other had the word 'Falsity' over it. Katala and Putala were about to decide who would enter into which cave when a tremendous dust-storm rose out of the dusky heavens. At that very moment, each of the two felt themselves being propelled by the tremendous force of the wind into one of the two caves, though they could not see which one it was that they had entered, blinded by the dust.

Katala came out the next morning with a scroll on which was written, 'THERE IS', and Putala with another one with the words, 'THERE IS NOT'. With these two scrolls, they returned to their village, where a new debate started.

This is what some people said : 'We believe that Katala went into the cave called 'Truth', and therein he found the scroll with the words, 'THERE IS'. Hence, God exists.' The descendants of these people are today known as the religious believers.

There were others who said : 'No, that is where you think Katala went to. But how can you be sure when there was this massive dust-storm around? Actually, we believe that it was Putala who went into the cave called 'Truth' where he found the scroll with the words, 'THERE IS NOT'. Katala did find a scroll with the words, 'THERE IS' but this scroll was actually in the cave marked 'Falsity'; there is therefore no reason to accept this scroll. In short, God does not exist.' The descendants of these people are called the atheists.

There was a third group, too, and those who were in this group replied : 'But how can you believe either that Katala went into the cave called 'Truth' and Putala went into the cave called 'Falsity' or that Katala went into the cave called 'Falsity' and Putala went into the cave called 'Truth'? What if both of them went into the cave called 'Truth'? Or, what if both of them went into the cave called 'Falsity'? We simply cannot be sure.' These people later came to be known as the agnostics.

Joining this conversation, a new group soon emerged which declared : 'Jeez man, you seriously don't believe this stuff about 'Truth' and 'Falsity', huh? Come on, give me a break, will you? I mean, just look at you! You have been fighting so many centuries over these words, and yet, what are they? You got to be kidding me. They are just words, can't you see that? There ain't nothing called 'Truth', nothing called 'Falsity'. It's all inside your mind, you know. When Katala and Putala were standing there in front of that mountain, they were just playing the fool around with these words, and they never imagined even in their wildest dreams that you would take them at their word.' So these people we shall call the post-modernists.

Perhaps, it is time to return from the parable to the 'real world'. But to think this way would, in fact, be to misunderstand my parable, for this parable is the real world, it is a comment on how ambiguous our experiences really are. Often, the reason why we disagree with one another is not because one person experiences something which the other does not (we live under the same skies, breathe the same air, and drink the same water, or, at least, almost the same in all these cases), but because these various experiences that we have do not 'speak for themselves' and can be interpreted in more than one way. It is we who place them within certain conceptual frameworks in order to 'make sense' of these experiences. (Curiously enough, even when we claim to have got rid of all such frameworks, we still hold on to some disguised versions of them.) Precisely which framework we choose is often simply a question of which one it is that we are born into; in the process of growing up, however, we may learn to reexamine and reevaluate this framework in the light of the others around us. Sometimes we may choose to hold on to our native framework (e.g. religious belief), sometimes we may move into a foreign one wherein we make our new home (e.g. atheism), and sometimes we may just go along, being not quite sure which framework it is that best 'fits the facts' (e.g. agnosticism).

The Writer is Mightier Than The Written

Start wondering about the power of words, and chances are that you shall never cease in this wondering. It might seem then that the whole world itself is one gigantic text onto which you are inscribing yourself; your words are your 'point of entry' into it. So that the 'I', the evanescent 'I' who is writing these words that you are now reading, is itself nothing more than a flickering shadow cast by these words, nothing more than just another word trapped in the words that it is trying to produce out of a sheer nothingness. As the Ancients used to say, it is one hell of a web that we are messed up in, and the 'whole point' is to extricate ourselves from it. Except in this case, such liberation is nowhere to be seen on the horizon : whichever direction you look into, there are just words, words, and more words.

And yet, there are some voices around, voices that tell us that some gaps, so to speak, have been found at the boundaries of this web of words. These remind us there are real human beings, beyond this tangle of words, beings of flesh and blood who cry, weep, mourn, grieve, and suffer, while we go on with our endless play of throwing words at one another. Those are the crevices where the 'I' can place itself and look outwards, and can say, 'The whole world is a text, and I am but an author.' What an insane thought! But if we humans cannot be allowed the bliss of liberation, we can at least console ourselves with our gift for irony. Irony, let us say, is for them who need it, and these are not just us, we the supreme spiders of our language webs, but also they, beyond this web, who have been reduced to absolute speechlessness by their suffering.

Three Meditations on Death

(1)

And all human blood
is like the dead sea
it flows and it ebbs
in a cataclysm of never-ending agony
and when you cross the valleys
know that it was not
the river of life that killed you
you died the very moment
you were born in the life of blood.

(2)

Your countrymen blindly went out
rushing under a war flag
that unites all aching blood
and over the heart-broken gorge
silence herself was silenced
by your fluorescent smile
turned into the noiselessness
of a fit of inexpressible laughter.

(3)

In the heart of the white lilies
there lies congealed the blood
of the men who fell in last night's battle
the quaking earth thirstily
laps up their agonised sweat
and then you lift your weightless eyelids
away from the heat and the dust
life is but the silence
that lies congealed
in the heart of your emptiness.

Relativising the Relativisers

If I had been a dog with metaphysical tendencies (surely any pet-lover's nightmare?), all I would have needed to do is to sniff hard enough at things and people around me, and I would have found out that many of them are Relativists, in some way or the other. But, then, I might not have been able to argue with them (can dogs argue? --- that is a nice bone to chew on), and might have even spent my time barking up the wrong tree. In any case, I am not, unfortunately, a dog. I am human, only too human, and I must therefore try my best to find out what my Relativist friends are trying to say, even without possessing any refined canine olfactory powers. They come in various shapes and sizes, but I particularly relish an argument with the specific breed that goes under the label 'historical relativist' (two others of my choice breeds are the 'cultural relativist' and the 'anthropological relativist').

In effect, this is what a historical relativist says : There is no trans-historical truth. That sounds pretty dense, so let me 'unpack' that claim. What such a relativist is claiming is that there are no truth-claims that can transcend the boundaries of space and time, and that the very notions of 'truth', 'rationality' and 'reality' are internal to the specific socio-historical contexts within different people have lived in.

I shall give you two reasons why that claim must be rejected by historians, one 'logical' and the other 'practical'.

(A) The historical relativist is putting forward a claim X, such that X : There is no trans-historical truth. Let us ask ourselves : Is X itself a truth-claim or not? If it is not, perhaps the relativist is simply mumbling to herself in her solipsistic dream, and we shall let her sleep in peace. (Let sleeping dogs lie --- sure canine wisdom.) But if it is indeed a truth claim, then the relativist has undermined her position by setting forth at least one claim X which is supposed to be extra-historical, that is, to apply to all human beings irrespective of their spatio-temporal locations. In other words, the relativist believes that X is true for all human beings, something that she is not allowed to do by her own position which states that no such truths exist. Consequently, her position is a self-defeating one, for she has implicitly (and perhaps, unknowingly as well) made a claim that transcends all historical circumstances.

(B) Next, a 'practical' comment. It is highly ironical that it is a historian who is putting forward this relativistic claim, for if it were to be accepted as true, what would be left for historians to study? How would she study ancient Greek history and understand why the Athenians behaved in certain ways, or read texts from the Middle Ages and try to explain the reasons that their writers had given for believing in certain things, or, closer in time, describe the 'causes' of the American Revolution? If 'rationality' is so completely embedded in specific world-views that with the demise of a certain world-view the notion of rationality associated with it goes too, how could we (writing in 'late-capitalist' London in the year 2004, or 'anti-west' Tehran in the year 2004, or 'post-communist' Romania in the year 2004, or 'pro-globalisation' Bangalore in the year 2004) possibly reason why so many people in France and Russia took to the path of revolution, why the American colonists sought independence from the British crown, and why some Indian 'freedom fighters' became 'extremists' and the others 'moderates'?

Consider, in specific, the case of the set of events that are labelled as the 'French Revolution' : why did it happen? You can pile up reason after reason, starting from economic theory to sociological analysis to geopolitical enquiries to commercial considerations, and yet still feel yourself asking the question : but why did it happen? I suggest that the 'missing link' in the explanation is this trans-historical truth : human beings have a certain craving for freedom, in whatever way they understand this notion, and they will not endure, beyond certain limits, any system that denies them this freedom.

What have we learnt from this exercise in mental gymnastics? That, with a nod in the direction of the feminists, a dog might turn out, after all, to be a man's best friend when arguing with Relativists. (For women, of course, it is diamonds.) That is, we must rely on our submerged canine instincts to hunt out the buried relativistic presuppositions in whatever people say, and expose to them the vicious circularity of their claims. Therefore, the next time someone comes to you and grandiloquently proclaims, 'There is no Truth!', just play along with her for a while. And then gently prod her with this tantalising question : Is that assertion of yours itself a truth-claim? 'No', did she say? --- well then, you can reply that you just love the sound of her glorious voice, and can thank her for casting such enlightening pearls before metaphysical swine like you; 'Yes', did you hear her reply? --- but then she has sawed off the very branch that she is sitting on!

The Land of the Free

Freedom is one hell of a bird. Keep it imprisoned inside a cage, and it will shriek its heart out until you have set it loose; and yet, no sooner have you set it free than it seeks to return to the cosiness of its former bondage. Or at least, that is the impression that I get when I read through various texts on the issue of 'freedom', starting from those of St Augustine to Karl Marx to Jean-Paul Sartre to J.B. Watson to B.F. Skinnner. (Note, by the way, that all of these are men, men who have made weighty declarations about the bondage of women, if not actually furthered it.) A historical survey of these writings will reveal that one group of activists, politicians, and writers exalt freedom 'to the skies', while another group is hell-bent on denying its very existence. As a guiding-thread into the labyrinthine caverns of these debates, one can hold on to a distinction between two notions of freedom, which I shall refer to here as 'Objective Freedom' and 'Subjective Freedom'.

Objective Freedom can be defined as the lack of external impediments towards the accomplishment of a certain task or an inter-connected set of goals, or the fulfillment of a specific end. Therefore, if these impediments are non-existent or have been removed, peacefully, legally, or violently, then you are --- in the objective sense --- free. For example, I do not have the objective freedom of being in New Zealand within the next twenty minutes, for we have (unfortunately?) not yet built any instrument that shall make such instant travel possible; I do have, however, the objective freedom of being in London in another two hours. Similarly, the claim of the British suffragettes was that women cannot be denied the objective freedom to vote; of (some of) the Indian 'freedom fighters' was that Indians must be given the objective freedom for self-rule; of many dissidents in the past was that people must have the objective freedom to practise their own religious and political beliefs; and of contemporary feminists is that governments must pass laws that will make it possible for women to enjoy the objective freedom, at the very least, of living in a world without gender discrimination. In short, when old man Rousseau declared, 'Man is born free, but is everywhere found in chains', he was primarily speaking about the objective freedom which (he believed that) humanity lacks.

Subjective freedom, on the other hand, is a much more delicate affair, and the philosophical terrain that various thinkers have tried to negotiate down the centuries is strewn with hidden minefields. Those who say that subjective freedom is real claim that we are subjectively free if we are able to choose whether or not to do something that we are objectively free to do; those who say that such subjective freedom is an illusion claim that we are not, in fact, free in this latter sense. I shall now describe, in greater detail, these two positions.

(A) Consider this hypothetical question : Are you free to commit suicide right now? In the objective sense, you are; all you need to do is, say, buy a bottle of cyanide, or find a knife, or get a gun. But are you free to do so in the subjective sense? Or consider two more questions : Are you free to kill your wife? and Are you free to burn down your house? Once again, objectively speaking, you may be free to do both, but whether or not you are free, subjectively speaking, to do so is another matter. (Note that the basic issue in this context is not 'morality'. Whether or not these actions are 'moral' is, indeed, a closely related type of question, but it is conceptually distinct from the type that we are considering here. We are not discussing what we ought to do, but whether we can do what we ought to.)

There is one group of thinkers who claim that you are subjectively free to do all of the above. You are indeed subjectively free to commit suicide right now, to kill your wife, and to burn down your house. You may (mistakenly) think, of course, that you are not free, but this is an example of 'bad faith' on your part. You are unable to bear the 'weight of your freedom', and so you shrink back with the excuse that you do not have this freedom. In truth, however, you do not have freedom (in the sense in which you 'have a car' or 'have pimples') but you are Freedom. Therefore, if you are objectively free to do something (jump down from the next clock-tower, eat a pizza, torture an infant, digest a worm, become a hermit, throw your money into the street, or shoot your sister) you are subjectively free as well to do it.

(B) Diametrically opposed to such thinkers are those who claim that subjective freedom does not exist (or, is an illusion). Some of them argue that a person's behaviour is completely fixed by ser (for the meaning of 'ser' refer to my post immediately below this one) genetic structure, environmental history, and immediate circumstances. All causes are physical, which means that what we refer to as 'mental events', that is, events such as desires, beliefs, feelings, wishes, purposes, intentions, and hopes, are ultimately physical phenomena. Therefore, according to these thinkers, it is wrong to say that we do something because we want to do it; rather, we do whatever we do because of our genetic endowment, enviromental history, and present circumstances, and all of these are physical causes.

Therefore, when faced with the question : 'Am I (subjectively) free to kill my wife?', you do not really have, as they say it in the movies, a choice in the matter. Either you kill her or you don't, but in either case your action has nothing to do with your wants, desires, or beliefs (and not least with whatever you might mean by that word 'morality'). However, even if you do kill your wife, you are not morally responsible for her death, for you were not really (subjectively) free not to have chosen to kill her. Both the notions of 'subjective freedom' and 'moral responsibility' are illusions which science has helped us to dispel. Thinkers of this group (may) further argue that in order to make sure that you do not kill any more of your future wives, what the law must do is not to send you to a 'reformation centre' but to change your genetic structure and environmental locations. To be sure, we do not presently know how such changes can be made or precisely what they would involve, but it is the task of the 'science of the future' to find out more about such things and inform the judiciary of the country about them.

There is, in addition to these polarised views, a third 'middle-of-the-road' position which is, in a certain sense, a paradox. To the question : 'Are our actions fixed by antecedent actions or events?' it replies : 'Yes', and to the question : 'Are we then subjectively free?', it again replies : 'Yes'. That is, though our behaviour flows out of our past choices, decisions, and actions, we are nevertheless subjectively free in the present in doing whatever we want to do. Consider this question : Was I subjectively free in setting up this blog? It is true that certain antecedent events preceded my creating this blog, such as my reading through some books and having discussions with some friends, on the basis of which I write some of these posts; my obtaining an internet connection; my finding out what a blog is and how to set up one; and, more fundamentally, my acquiring the belief that it is a good thing to write a blog. Nevertheless, when I did eventually set up the blog, I was subjectively free in the sense that this action flowed from my desire, intention, and wish to have one. Therefore, according to this view, we are subjectively free when we do, whatever we do, because we have the wish to do so (and not because we have been drugged, threatened, compelled, or hypnotised into doing so).

To return to the question : 'Am I free to kill my wife?', you are subjectively free to do so if you have acquired, as a result of certain past events over a certain duration of time, the desire and intention to do so. However, if you do kill your wife, you will be held as morally responsible for that deed since it was a voluntary act which you were not compelled to perform by anything (or anyone) extrinsic to you. Therefore, according to this 'middle-of-the-road' view, punishment must be regarded not as punitive but as reformatory/rehabilitative. Since it is possible to change the nature of a person's desires, beliefs, wishes and intentions, it is consequently possible to change these latter, if necessary, by punishment. (Who is to be given the authority for bringing about or supervising such changes, whether it is 'ethical' to attempt such changes, and who is to decide what the best method is for achieving such changes, are crucial questions in themselves for politicians, educationists, psychologists, and social workers.)

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The Grammar of Gender

If you are in India right now, try calling a friend on a Reliance cellphone which has been switched off, and you shall be greeted by the message : 'The person you are trying to reach has switched off his phone'. What makes it particularly ironical is the fact that this message is pre-recorded in a woman's voice.

And no, I am not pointing this out because I bear some grudge against Reliance and Company : all of us, users of English, have a specific linguistic debility in not being able to express ourselves through non-gendered personal pronouns. One way of trying to overcome this is to deliberately use the pronoun 'she' in places where our ears have been familiarised (or, acculturalised) to hearing the pronoun 'he'; so that we may say, 'England expects every person to do her duty', and, 'Every citizen must pay her taxes'. However, such statements can be misleading (especially for a new learner of the English language) if they are taken to imply that men are not be counted as 'English' or as 'citizens' of a country. Another way is to use the compound 'he/she' in all these grammatical locations, but this usage can easily become monotonous and tedious beyond a certain point, and may even disrupt the flow of the argument being put forward.

A third way of trying to get round this problem is to use three new words 'se', 'ser' and 'mer' for the nominative, the possessive, and the accusative cases respectively.

(A) The sentence : 'England expects every man to do his duty' therefore becomes : 'England expects every person to do ser duty'. The word 'ser', that is, stands for 'his/her'.

(B) The sentence : 'If we do not worship God, He will send us to perdition' becomes : 'If we do not worship God, Se will send us to perdition'. The word 'se' is a condensation of 'he/she'.

(C) The sentence : 'When we see a man in distress, we should help him' shall become : 'When we see a person in distress, we should help mer'. The word 'mer' gets rid of the clumsy compound 'him/her'.

To be sure, these three words 'se', 'ser', and 'mer' may sound awkward at the moment, but just as other (new) words are continually flowing into the living stream of the English language, so too over a period of time these words may become part and parcel of our linguistic vocabulary. When that happens, Reliance and Company shall have a more inclusive message on their cellphones : 'The person you are trying to reach has switched off ser phone'.